Your GPA will hurt you. However, if you are applying in 2011 and you are a junior now you can improve your GPA. I think you have about a 50% (maybe alittle high) shot at Cornell and about a 25% shot at Penn, Virginia, and Michigan. Of course, alot depends on your experiences, soft factors, etc... (or at least it did for me) Try applying at ED at one of the three schools you really like. I think an ED at any of those schools gives you a very good shot.

KMaine wrote:In at Michigan, WL at VA with those #s a couple of years ago. Was not intereeted in Penn. Do a good job with your Michigan application. VA will only care about your numbers. Good luck!

Be sure to write convincing Why Mich/Penn/UVA essays for all three schools. I would disagree with the fact that UVA only cares about numbers. If you're out of state, UVA almost exclusively accepts those who wrote Why essays. Their OOS acceptance rate is ridiculously low (in the single digits).

KMaine wrote:In at Michigan, WL at VA with those #s a couple of years ago. Was not intereeted in Penn. Do a good job with your Michigan application. VA will only care about your numbers. Good luck!

Be sure to write convincing Why Mich/Penn/UVA essays for all three schools. I would disagree with the fact that UVA only cares about numbers. If you're out of state, UVA almost exclusively accepts those who wrote Why essays. Their OOS acceptance rate is ridiculously low (in the single digits).

Prospective students should keep in mind that the University of Virginia is a publicly-funded university. Consequently, it reserves 40 percent of its seats for residents and the remaining 60 percent for nonresidents. This leaves nonresidents at a slight disadvantage, which is discussed in more detail below.

Virginia Residents:

Dean Trujillo insists, “There is no particular “boost” given to residents. But residents have mathematics on their side.” In fact, there are “over nine nonresident applications for every resident application.” So, out of 7,880 applications in 2008, about 7,000 were from nonresidents. The ratio of resident to nonresident admittance is 60 to 40, so “nonresidents get only 1.5 seats for every resident seat in the entering class,” which is a huge boon for resident applicants.

Still, there are no special considerations given to Virginia residents who do not meet the school’s high LSAT and GPA standards. A sizable number of highly qualified applicants live in Virginia, and Trujillo lets it be known that “the medians between the pools are not statistically distinguishable.” This has led him to “joke that getting in…is ridiculously difficult (for nonresidents) rather than just being plain hard (for residents).”

Do you think it might help me to retake for the third time if I can score one or two points higher or does it hurt me more that I am retaking for the third time, especially when it comes to these schools?